Time goes by
luke.d...@googlemail.com
I'd write a few words here.
I first found this group in 1996 while I was at university and
discovered usenet. Since then I have written a few posts as various
personas and different email addresses through the years, all the
while waiting and watching for a successor to the original game I
played on my C64 in my bedroom all those years ago. I find it
staggering that 15 years after FFE and 20 years after playing the
original, I am still waiting and hoping. The mention of a new Elite
release still stirs up memories from such a long time ago.
As time has gone by, I have slowly got older and continue going about
my own life. I still come back here every few years, just to see
whether this group is still active or even exists. At the moment I
would probably have no time to play Elite IV, even if it did come out,
yet the hope is still there.
In perspective, I think it will be impossible for Elite 4 to live up
to my expectations, so I'm sort of thinking that maybe it should never
be released because I will no doubt be disappointed. Maybe memories
are best left in the past.
imipak
I would argue that whilst the game cannot possibly -match-
expectations, and must fall short in some areas, it is entirely
possible for it to exceed expectations in other areas. We have seen
with Castle Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake that revolutionary gaming engines
happen. To some extent, we also saw this with Virus/Virus2000 and
Frontier/First Encounters (where realistic Newtonian physics was the
order of the day). I'm not disputing the originality of Braben's work
there, merely that it didn't spark a revolution in the way people
thought of games. We have seen programmability in games go from
writing your own screens in early Arcade-style games to writing your
own expansion packs in things like Oolite.
The multiplayer world has also evolved. MUD-1 is still the only full-
sentence parsing engine, but that proved an evolutionary dead-end.
AberMUD tried basic graphics, but that too was a dead-end. The LP-
style MUDs and Tiny-style MUDs offered programmability and ruled the
scene for a long, long time. Then graphical first-person games took
off - Second Life, World of Warcraft, etc. Now, Flash MMORGs are
starting to supplant those.
These were not the only multiplayer games. XConq, XTanks, Empire (now
Wolfpack Empire), XTrek/Netrek, Command and Conquer, Quake (already
mentioned) - these have all tried various avenues in the multiplayer
arena. Some have worked, some haven't.
Virtual reality has been and gone, though doubtless will return once
better technology exists. The experimental interfaces with the brain
look intriguing and suitably cyberpunkish.
We don't know the mind of Braben, or the skill of his developers. It
is entirely possible that the next Real Genius Idea will come from the
group - right now, we just don't know.
Rhino
Well no matter how good Elite 4 is, I think the feelings you describe
are simply a symptom of getting older. Whilst I enjoy contemporary
blasts, whether it's hacking up a sentry gun in TF2, jumping across
skyscrapers in Mirror's Edge or puzzling my way through 'Ben there,
Dan that!' (well worth a try!), nothing compares even slightly to the
feelings I used to get watching my Spectrum load away, ready to play
Elite or Skooldaze or whatever games were about then. I don't think
it's necessarily about the quality of games - there was something (in
my eyes) special about the 8-bit years that no matter how we wish for
it, the same emotions can never be re-captured (even with an
emulator!).
Dave N.
Steve
"Rhino" <psy...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:550f567d-e8e8-4c51...@m11g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...
> I don't think
> it's necessarily about the quality of games - there was something (in
> my eyes) special about the 8-bit years that no matter how we wish for
> it, the same emotions can never be re-captured (even with an
> emulator!).
>
> Dave N.
True. I've lost count of the number of 8-bit games I've loaded into an
emulator, played for 2 minutes and thought "what a load of c**p! What did I
ever see in this game?"
imipak
I think there are two things that were truly special about that era.
The first, and most obvious, is that several key games (Elite
included) pushed the hardware to the absolute limits. The code was
incredibly tight, as you couldn't afford to waste either a byte OR a
clock-cycle, there were so few of either. (The best-of-the-best
"demos" did the same thing.) Modern code, by comparison, is sloppy. It
doesn't show the raw potential of the machine, it doesn't show the raw
potential of the imagination, it's at best a stepwise improvement on
the last generation.
(How many modern games are sold as hardware testing tools, the way
SimLogic/Microsoft's Flight Simulator originally was?)
Elite was new. There had never been anything like it before. Arguably,
Revs was new too. There had been racing games, but nothing that
captured the feel so well. Chuckie Egg put a whole new spin on
platform games. (Even Attic Attack did that.) Dungeon was
revolutionary in a world that knew Wumpus. Level 9's Snowball and Sir
Tec's Wizardry all massively extended our understanding of what a game
could do.
Once Castle Wolfenstein was released, it was only a matter of time
before gameplay advanced (Doom), multiplayer was added (Quake) and it
moved into a fantasy realm (World of Warcraft). Nothing revolutionary
has happened there, it's all been evolutionary.
If someone wrote a revolutionary game tomorrow (and they might), I
believe it would give you exactly the same feeling those old 8-bit
revolutions had. Why shouldn't it? You're older and expect more, yes,
but we're in the age of 64-bit 4-way 4-core 3 GHz gaming machines. You
-should- expect more than you expected from the early 8-bit 1-4 MHz
machines of your youth, and you should most definitely expect the
revolutionary concepts (when they happen) to be that much more
revolutionary and that much more spectacular.
The problem is not with your expectations, it is with coders using off-
the-shelf engines and re-hashed formulaic game ideas to flood the
market with really not much more than cheap rip-offs in order to meet
impossible deadlines. And if the sweatshop claims about places like
Electronic Arts is anything to go by, there probably aren't any game
coders who give a damn about doing any more.
The only thing that remains is whether David Braben can get in touch
with the magic, the muse, that produced the original Elite, to produce
a game that is so far beyond that it's not remotely evolutionary but a
revolution in the gaming industry. I think he can, and I think at
least some of the delay in Elite 4 is because he thinks so too but
that these things don't happen to order, they happen when they happen
and not a moment sooner. (I could be wrong on that, he's more than
welcome to offer the real reason if it's different.)
I've long since given up on other game coders being able to achieve
the real revolutions. To me, this is the last real chance any of the
"old school" coders have of showing it can still happen. The current
school won't/can't, and there's no sign of a new generation of
hardcore garage gamer geeks evolving.
Angus
@e34g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>, luke.d...@googlemail.com says...
>
>
> In perspective, I think it will be impossible for Elite 4 to live up
> to my expectations, so I'm sort of thinking that maybe it should never
> be released because I will no doubt be disappointed. Maybe memories
> are best left in the past.
Don't say that to somebody who still uses their Amiga! :)
But I differ with that viewpoint - the 2 Elite sequels have not been
without an issue or two, but that hasn't lessened the affection we have
for the original. I'd love to see Mr B release an updated game, and if
it doesn't blow my mind, well, no harm done.
I mean personally I think Eric Clapton's best work was done in 1966 with
the Bluesbreakers, but I'd still pay to see him 43 years later. :)
Rhino
> I've long since given up on other game coders being able to achieve
> the real revolutions. To me, this is the last real chance any of the
> "old school" coders have of showing it can still happen. The current
> school won't/can't, and there's no sign of a new generation of
> hardcore garage gamer geeks evolving.
Suffice to say, though, that I take your point, mostly. And whilst
there's something I always admire and appreciate about squeezing every
last cycle and byte from a computer's processor and memory, today it's
not necessary to do that, so ideally people concentrate on the actual
gameplay more (supposedly). OK, everything is derivative nowadays in
terms of genre, gameplay, style, etc.... but it's a lot easier to come
up with something original when there hasn't been a great deal before-
hand, like when Elite was released. Now it's far more difficult to
truly break ground as so many ideas have been done, to greater or
lesser levels of greatness.
Gah, would like to reply properly, but off to Belgium for a week.
Leaving now....:)
Stay frosty, alt.fan.elite posse.
Dave N
imipak
I'll agree with you. However, there's the inevitable "but". :) By
definition, any game that -has- to squeeze every last byte out of
memory and every last clock-cycle out of the CPU in order to work has
to be doing something that mainstream games do not and cannot. This
doesn't necessarily make it revolutionary, in and of itself, true. Nor
is the reverse true, as a revolutionary idea does not (in itself)
impose any requirements constraints.
However, and this is the crux of my argument, the ability to squeeze
every last drop of memory and power out of a machine alters the way in
which you think. It's not just a style thing, it's a mental process
thing. It changes the way you look at problems, the way you approach
the coding and where you begin and end. Even if a game isn't actually
written that tightly, the mindset would allow the programmer to
concentrate on the gameplay rather than the eye-candy.
If you look at the way that game engines typically work, they're
graphics plus rules, with very little new code added for any specific
game. Since the rules are never going to be Turing-complete, such game
engines are inherently going to be very limited in what they can do.
But you don't need to get into the intricacies of ia64 assembly to be
able to write a decent game. C and Fortran compile very close to
assembly in terms of speed and abstract away a lot of the horrors of
going at such a deep level. (Fortran actually still has a slight edge
over C in terms of speed, the main problem is the I/O. But since you
can link Fortran and C binaries together, in many cases, Fortran for
the engine and C for the graphics would work just fine. Mind you,
finding a Fortran programmer these days is going to be harder than
finding someone who knows the Xeon instruction set.)
For that matter, if you want a turn-based strategy game, a-la
Civilization/Freeciv, but revolutionary, then you could probably get
away with Erlang. One of the nice things about Erlang is it's highly
parallel, making it a doddle to write a multi-player/multi-AI game.
The scalability's taken care of by the language. Writing in Occam
would have the same effect. In both cases, performance takes a huge
hit but the reliability and scalability of the code is massively
improved.
But modern coders just don't have the mindset.
I guess, to me, it goes back a lot to a key concept in the hit movie
"A Beautiful Mind" - a revolutionary game is on-par with the Original
Idea, and the carbon-copy games are derivatives. The Original Idea
doesn't have to be written in any particular way, but it HAS to be
chased in a particular way. The coders who never chase after the
Original Idea will never have one, no matter how good they are.
Rhino
<snip>
> However, and this is the crux of my argument, the ability to squeeze
> every last drop of memory and power out of a machine alters the way in
> which you think. It's not just a style thing, it's a mental process
> thing. It changes the way you look at problems, the way you approach
> the coding and where you begin and end. Even if a game isn't actually
> written that tightly, the mindset would allow the programmer to
> concentrate on the gameplay rather than the eye-candy.
>
> If you look at the way that game engines typically work, they're
> graphics plus rules, with very little new code added for any specific
> game. Since the rules are never going to be Turing-complete, such game
> engines are inherently going to be very limited in what they can do.
I'm sure that programming in such a way that one gets the most out of
a machine will change the way that final game will play and look, but
that doesn't necessarily make for a better end product. I know a bit
about getting the most out of a particular machine (I was a member of
an Atari ST demo group, making demos that used every last clock
clycle), and whilst you may end up with some great (or awful)
productions, generally speaking, those productions are judged by
either the standards of the time or by people who know the limitations
of the hardware.
Nowadays, unless you're writing for antiquated hardware, you're
unlikely to be programming in pure assembler which, whilst it may be a
shame from a nostalgic perspective, the rules have changed so much for
making games today, that it makes it impossible to return to those
times.
The other thing to bare in mind, of course, is that to make a modern
3D game to any standard, either you have to spend a great deal of time
making an engine, or you use third party middleware, like the Unreal
engine (or preferably something a lot cheaper, like Unity). Now this
isn't to say that people who use middleware can't make a great game
because they're not getting down to the nuts and bolts of their
machine, but more that there simply isn't time to start a whole game
from scratch these days unless you either a) have the patience and
time or b) have the budget.
Games like Elite and other 8-bit wonders we all know and love had very
small development spans by today's standards. And not only that, the
markets weren't completely saturated by every Tom, Dick and Harry
trying to get a slice of the pie, so ultimately the risks were less
and the rewards were much more likely to materialise. Remember
Codemasters old games? A lot of them were total crud, but they kept
pumping them out until some of them stuck. And because everything was
still new back then, they were in the minority of companies doing that
and they were successful largely on those grounds alone. If you turn
to the only modern market that encourages homebrew games, the iPhone
market, you'll find that there are a lot of old Codemaster-type games,
only there are 60 thousand of them rather than just a few dozen.
I think there are some amazing games around today (OK, the majority
are total shite and completely derivative, but we know that already).
Games that are far more playable and rich in depth than a lot of games
of old. Elite is fairly unique in it's depth. It's like a framework
where your imagination fills in the gaps and makes the experience
fulfilling. I put the 16-bit Midwinter and Damocles (or 8-bit
Mercenary) in these camps as well.
Dave N
Allan Robertson
Elite game, but I'm sure I would have loved it. My Elite is Frontier Elite
2, first played it in 1997 on my Amiga, still remember the day I bought it
second hand from a CashConverters shop. Never played a game like it since,
I messed about with XBTF and EVE Online but they never captured the feeling
I got from first playing FE2 the only game that ever did come close was
Warhead again for the Amiga.
I used to post here in from late 99 to about 04 or something, nice to see
some people are still around, I don't know what if anything will come of
Elite 4 I know many consider it vapourware but then again so was EVE Online
for a few years and it's had some interesting success.
Angus
says...
>
> Nice post, sadly I was too young and poor in the 80's to enjoy the first
> Elite game, but I'm sure I would have loved it. My Elite is Frontier Elite
> 2, first played it in 1997 on my Amiga, still remember the day I bought it
> second hand from a CashConverters shop. Never played a game like it since,
> I messed about with XBTF and EVE Online but they never captured the feeling
> I got from first playing FE2 the only game that ever did come close was
> Warhead again for the Amiga.
>
Hi Allan.
Great taste - Frontier, Warhead and the Amiga all in the same post. :)
Did you see any of Glynn William's later games? I'm thinking of I-War
and I War 2. From what I have seen they were very cool. I've retired my
Amiga, or at least out it on reduced hours, and have been playing
Freelancer on the pc, which I'm enjoying, although its not life-
changing. :)
Cheers,
Angus.
Angus
@e34g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>, luke.d...@googlemail.com says...
>
>
> to my expectations, so I'm sort of thinking that maybe it should never
> be released because I will no doubt be disappointed. Maybe memories
> are best left in the past.
Don't say that to somebody who still uses their Amiga! :)